Topic: neural population codes

Naturalistic animal behavior can now be efficiently collected and annotated, but understanding brain function in natural settings remains challenging. It is difficult to record neural activity in freely moving animals, and complex statistics and lack of stimulus repeats preclude traditional analyses. While a popular approach is to first identify reduced, data-driven behavioral variables prior to seeking neural correlates, we propose a complementary approach: comparing a suite of mechanistic models, directly fit to behavior, that embody competing hypotheses about single-cell or population neura